REVIEWS
Lock, Stock and Two Smokin' Aces
When indulging director Rick Carnahan in his very slick, very well-packaged, very expensive-feeling film starring Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, Ryan Reynolds, Alicia Keys, and Ben Affleck, I couldn't help but think: Is this just a cartoonish version of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels without the humor?
Guy Ritchie's funny mob picture brought a new look and feel to it. But then he tarnished his own success by trying to remake it in Snatch. That second film made one wonder if he'd lost his creative impulse, had nothing more to offer than a bigger budget, more bloated, more boring film with prominent actors. Surface glitz without substance.
I felt the same watching Smokin' Aces, not that writer and director Carnahan tried to reprise his absolutely stunning film Narc, but that Carnahan's new vehicle was just an updated copy of Ritchie's original filmâ¦or worse, it was a copy of the much inferior Snatch, with a dose of choreographed violence from Kill Billthrown in for good measure.
Aces is a simulacrum of a simulacrum, watered down into predictable plot lines, banal dialogue that masquerades as authentic street tough, nudity without sexiness, death and mayhem that simply feels like a cheap imitation (or a comic book written for a very young audience).
The plot: There's an old school mobster calling in a hit on Las Vegas showman, Buddy "Aces" Israel (5-time entertainer of the year on the strip). The showman isn't just a showman after all; he's a mobster whose rise and fall leads him to talk to the FBI.
From the moment the film begins, one senses it is trying too hard to be cool, edgy, hip. There are lots of slick camera angles switching back and forth, scenes with smoke and mirrors, chainsaws, high-tech explosions, 50mm rifles blasting through hotel windows, heavy metal music blaring as men with tattoos cut up FBI agents. But there was no "there" there, just bluster and hot air with no attempt at developing anything more than a caricature of a lesbian, a caricature of a mobster, a caricature of an FBI agent.
Why is Ray Liotta doing in this film? Why is Andy Garcia reprising his Ocean's 1 role with an oddly contrived FBI man with a southern accent? Why is Jeremy Piven stuck in a penthouse suite at a casino acting out the same scene again and again, caught in a perpetual cycle of cocaine and guns? But most of all, why did Rick Carnahan make this film?
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